Valentine's Fit for a Queen

Your given name in early childhood defines the spaces you inhabit and the way others interact with you.You examine it as though it were sitting in a room across from you, it's characteristics ones you are expected to have; your life's first goal.

You know that your name is owned by other people as well, a collected responsibility inhabiting the name chosen for you. When your name also belongs to a Queen, your own head can become too big for any crown to fit. This was the case for me one particular Valentine's Day.

Chosen by my Third Grade Teacher to play the part of an English nursemaid in our class play, I wore my First Communion dress and white shoes from the year before. I mimicked the voices of the two elderly sisters who lived in Apartment 4B two floors above my own. My teacher called me aside to tell me I was brilliant in the part and had made the play a success.

I decided then and there it must be a natural thing for all girls named Elizabeth to have an English accent. I  continued to talk with one for months to come. I thought it was the way I was meant to sound.

I still had my accent as Valentine's Day approached it's space on the calendar. My mother said we would be making them ourselves. She spread before me on our dining room table sheets of colored stickers, each a different shape. I couldn't imagine how on earth we could transform circles and ovals and triangles and squares into Valentines anyone would want.

By the end of our evening, as if by magic, my mother showed me how the shapes could be used to create the faces of all the different types of children from all over the world. She gently talked about the unique characteristics of each country, even my own.

My teacher called me again to her desk on Valentine's Day to tell me how very special my Valentine children were and how happy she was I had decided to be American again. She didn't make me feel silly at all.

My Around the World Ornaments are exactly like the ones my mother helped me to make from sheets of stickers that were only circles, ovals, triangles, and squares.

Please do not Pin pattern on Pinterest